Shankar Gopalakrishnan
As central India’s forest belts are swept into an ever-intensifying state offensive and resulting civil war, there has been a strong convergence of left, liberal and progressive arguments on Operation Green Hunt. This note argues that this ‘basic line’ is problematic. The line can be summarised as:
- The conflict is rooted in resource grabbing by corporate capital, in the form of large projects, SEZs, mining, etc.
- Such resource grabbing leads people to take up arms to defend themselves, resulting in the ongoing conflict.
- The conflict thus consists of a state drive to grab people’s homes and resources, with people resisting by taking to arms as self-defence.
Supporters of the Maoists’ positions now often conflate these points with the more orthodox positions on the necessity for “protracted people’s war” in a ‘semi-feudal semi-colonial’ state. Liberals in turn tend to deny these orthodox positions and instead advocate the resource grab – displacement – corporate attack issue as the “real” explanation. Both, however, accept this as the predominant dynamic at the heart of the current conflict.
But at the heart of this line lies an unstated question: why are forest areas the main battleground in this war? While the conflict is not coterminous with the forests – most of India’s forest areas are not part of this war, and the conflict extends outside the forest areas in some regions – forests are both politically and geographically at its heart.
Most answers to this question are either over-specific – “the minerals are found there” – or over-general – “these areas are backward / remote / marginalised, a creation of uneven development, and the state is weak there.” The latter are all correct generalisations, but in themselves they beg the question: why are these areas backward, marginalised and under-developed? This note argues that we need to engage with the political economy of forests and the nature of accumulation in these belts before we can accurately answer this question. Such an engagement, in turn, reveals political risks in the standard narrative.
The Forest Areas
Some basic features of the political economy of forest areas are outlined in a sketch here. The key defining feature of these areas is one legal-political-institutional complex: India’s system of forest management. The British initiated the current system of resource control in forest areas in the mid nineteenth century, and it reached its present form around the turn of the 20th century. The system has since then maintained a remarkable continuity for more than a century, an indicator of its importance to India’s ruling classes.
This system has its roots in the requirements of British industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century, for which timber was a key raw material, both within India (for the railway networks that strengthened imperial control and allowed extraction of resources) and in the UK itself (particularly ship building). The systems of forest control that existed in India at the time, where village communities, religious institutions, local rulers and tribal societies operated multiple and complex systems of management, did not permit such easy extraction. They also did not serve British interests, since timber trees were naturally not given high priority in such management systems. As a result, the British instituted the Forest Department and passed a series of three Forest Acts – in 1865, 1878 and 1927 – to essentially bring India’s timber resources under their control and provide a legal-institutional form for their management. The 1927 Act remains India’s main forest law.
The British Forest Acts were based on the principle of expropriation: any area could be declared to be a government forest, whereupon rights in this area would have to be respected / settled (the process varied over the course of the three acts). The form of such rights was whittled down to essentially individual land rights by the time of the 1927 law, and even these were subject to the decision of a forest settlement officer. The resulting failure to record even the individual rights of adivasis, Dalits and most other forest dwelling communities is well documented. This process continued and was consolidated after independence, excepting in the Northeast.
But this was not merely a question of administrative failure. The forest laws had three key consequences for production relations. The first was that, as with enclosures anywhere, they sought to reduce what were essentially territories and landscapes to commodities, in this case exemplified by timber. The variations in pre-colonial management systems notwithstanding, none of them was based on principles of commodity management; though often far from democratic or egalitarian, they were concerned with regulation of use and (at most) extraction of revenue. Their purpose did not revolve around the extraction of a single commodity; this was an innovation of the British. The result of this process was to bring Indian forests into a specific position within the global capitalist commodity circuit, servicing the industrial needs of transport sectors within the imperialist bourgeosie.
But, unlike the classical enclosures of England, in the enclosure attempt in India’s forests failed – bringing about the second consequence. The attempt to seize most of central India’s forests met with fierce resistance, being one of the triggers for a series of adivasi uprisings across central India (the tribals of the Northeast having largely fought off British control from the beginning). The British lacked the force to clear these areas of people and suppress their management systems, and the post colonial Indian state – despite its ever increasing reserves of repressive power – has also lacked the ability to do so. The result has been that one reality exists in the world of law, where forests are uninhabited wilderness, and another exists in reality, where millions use and depend on them for survival. More important than the fact that these uses are illegal is that they are not recorded, and as such outside the knowledge of the state system.
This produced the third and most important consequence: a distorted system of property relations, from the point of view of classical ‘capitalism’. In short, security of private tenure does not exist in the forests. Enclosure, rather than creating and defining the rule of private property, has produced a chaotic situation of competing claims, de facto management systems that clash with de jure ones and state policies that are based on a combination of fantasy at the time of policymaking (Project Tiger, for instance) and brutality in implementation. These apply to all resources in the area, not only to land.
Integration into India’s Political Economy
A lack of defined property relations has, in turn, further shaped both the integration of these areas into Indian capitalism (1) and the forms of resistance adopted by people in these areas. First, accumulation in these areas is simultaneously constrained and driven by the direct exercise of state force. Close relations with the formal state machinery are a precondition for acccumulation in forest areas, whether one is a tendu leaf contractor, a landlord, a tea estate, a forest guard or Vedanta. This is accumulation by dispossession as a continuous process.
Such a situation obviously poses risks both to legitimacy and to ‘orderly’ accumulation. But it also proves to be a useful compromise in a context where state force alone simply cannot exterminate or remove the entire forest dwelling population. The current situation provides direct benefits to large sectors of India’s ruling classes. On the one hand, the continuous subsidy to capital that is created by the provision of free or cheap minerals, water, timber and land from forest areas has contributed an untold and inestimable amount to India’s capitalist ‘development’, both earlier and in the recent neoliberal era. It is no accident that most large projects at all stages since independence have involved forest land. On the other hand, this situation has produced a partially proletarianised population of crores of people – mostly, but not only, adivasis – whose traditional productive resources (particularly forest produce) have been expropriated, and who are now vulnerable to super-exploitation as migrant workers. Nor are the consequences limited to present day forest dwellers; the resulting desperate reserve army of workers has had a historical and geographical ‘ripple effect’, diminishing the strength of the working class as a whole (most visible in the heavy and increasing use of adivasi migrant labour across India’s “developed” capitalist belts).
Resistance in Forest Areas
The consequence of this is that the link between capital, the state and the use of force is thus blatantly obvious in forest areas in a manner that it is not elsewhere. If hegemony consists of the combination of consent with the armor of coercion, it is the armor that forest dwellers see. This, together with the reality of ill-defined property relations, has had consequences for the way people have fought back.
Indeed, I would argue that the persistence and reproduction of collective property relations among adivasi and tribal communities is not the result of some kind of historical exceptionalism, or relics of a “past culture” or “feudal mode of production.” Rather they are a reflection of the concrete combination of weak private property relations and state repression on the other. In the forest and tribal areas, the nature of capitalist exploitation makes collective production both concretely possible and a key source of resistance (since it is the subject of direct repression), and as a result these forms of production are being reproduced. Indeed, the communities with the strongest systems of collective production in India today are the tribal communities of the Northeast, such as the Nagas, the Mizos, the Garos and others, who have literally been at war against expropriation attempts continuously since the colonial period. In central India, where such struggles have been less successful, the state suppression of community management systems has progressed much further – but they remain alive in such phenomena as community forest management (practiced by thousands of villages in Orissa and Jharkhand), collective gathering and management of minor forest produce, collective grazing systems, etc.
Where internal differentiation has occurred, as it has in all communities, such differentiation has also been ‘distorted’. It has produced small elites, generally among those close to the state machinery (including beneficiaries of reservations, panchayat leaders, JFM Committee members, etc.), who are polarised against large masses of people on the brink of destitution. This is also true among non-adivasi forest dwelling communities, most of whom were already integrated into a greater degree of private property relations prior to the declaration of state forests, but among whom similar processes have operated in forest areas.
Forms of Resistance
The net result of this has been to produce a situation where the state is both strong and weak. The strength, of course, stems from the availability of force and the lack of integration into the mainstream political system, which ensures that any agitation is met with inhuman repression. But the weakness stems from the lack of hegemony and the very clear boundary between “rulers” and “ruled.” In the forest areas, the binary of “state vs people” has a glaring reality that people experience in their daily lives. The state both is and is seen to be the direct agent of exploitation.
The result is that struggles in these areas have often given space for more radical formations, and for raising more fundamental political issues, than in other parts of India. This is not just true of the CPI(Maoist), but of the history of struggles in adivasi areas generally, both before and after independence. Often phrased in millenarian and revivalist language, the adivasi uprisings of the nineteenth century demanded not just the exit of the British but the reconstruction of their entire society. Closer to the present day, the undivided CPI found some of its strongest bases among adivasis, as have both the CPI(Maoist) and the democratic mass organisations. The longest running armed conflicts in India – the struggles in the Northeast – are also marked by the same dynamics. Meanwhile, the weakness of the state has also made it the target of other struggles in forest areas. For instance, practically all streams of the Indian left – from the parliamentary parties through the armed groups and the mass organisations – have staged their most successful drives for land occupation (i.e. land takeovers by the landless) on forest land.
Forests and the War
It is incorrect, in this light, to see forests as either separate from Indian capitalism or society or to see them as simply the more remote or backward parts of that society. Rather, forests and forest areas function within a specific politico-economic space as a result of the manner in which they are integrated with the Indian economy. It is not that there are no similarities between this space and that of other parts of the Indian socioeconomic formation; there are parallels with the role of the state in urban areas, for instance, or with the nature of oppression among the landless peasantry. But the specificity of forest areas, produced by their role within the current socioeconomic formation, is still valid. As said earlier, most of the current discussion on Operation Green Hunt does not recognise this fact, and instead seeks to both over-specify it and, more importantly, over generalise it.
The tendency to over-specify is visible in a factual error made by nearly all current cirtiques: the argument that the conflict is over corporate projects. Displacement by corporations and projects covers a huge area in absolute terms, but this is only a small part of India’s forests and adivasi areas. The vast majority of adivasis and forest dwellers, including in Maoist areas, are not threatened with displacement, and will not be threatened with it, however intense the corporate offensive may become.
To fail to see this is to open an obvious factual contradiction that is easy for the state and its supporters to attack. If the armed struggle is a question of self-defence against displacement, the Digvijay Singhs immediately ask why the CPI(Maoist) did not so strongly oppose displacement-inducing projects earlier. Others demand to know that if the only issue is corporate projects, why are some of the most intense struggles being fought where there is no project visible? Moreover, say the news anchors, if the war is one of self-defence against corporate displacement (which after all does not apply to most of India), is the CPI(Maoist) being delusional when it talks of overthrowing the Indian state? Indeed, by over-emphasising the displacement issue, many reduce the Maoist movement to precisely the kind of formation that they are most critical of: an issue based anti-displacement struggle, with all its ideological and political vulnerabilities.
The answer to all of these questions, of course, is that the struggles (armed and unarmed) in forest areas are not a response to displacement alone; they are a result of the continuum of state-driven repression and expropriation that dominates in these areas, of which corporate projects are but the most extreme example. Operation Green Hunt may have been initiated due to corporate pressure, but the war as a whole is much older and much broader.
But to accept this is to, in turn, open another flank for attack. If displacement and “annihilation” are not the issue, can it be said that there is “no choice” but to take up arms? If oppression in the forests is the problem, many mass organisations have worked in these areas before the Maoists, and many such struggles continue both there and elsewhere. True, most of these organisations have resorted to physical self-protection when attacked – the vast majority were and are not Gandhians. But there is a gulf between such “violence” and the strategy of protracted people’s war.
In order to respond to this, many abandon over-specific arguments, but instead fall into over-generalisation – using simplified versions of traditional Maoist positions. In this view, the war in the forests is the “leading edge” of working class struggles in the country, a result of the intensification of “neo robber baron capitalism” (2). This war is here presented as the most radical response to a brutal state intent on expropriating everything from its oppressed, and the rest of India’s working class should, in this view, look upon the war as both model and inspiration. The CPI(Maoist) itself tends to adopt this position in its recent public statements (being clear, after all, that it is not fighting an anti-displacement struggle).
But it is not clear how a struggle that currently has its deepest roots in forest areas – with their specific history – can be described as the “leading edge” of a new democratic revolution. There is no linear manner in which the forest areas can be placed on a continuum of backwardness from the other areas of India; their configuration is specific to them, with some similarities but many differences with formations in other parts of the country. Sweeping claims of being a “leading edge” would only be true if the war in the forests is obviously generalisable, in the sense of developing a praxis that is extendable to other areas and configurations of exploitation in the country. This is not clear in either Maoist statements or in the external analyses that adopt this line.
Indeed, one might note, as a “stylised fact”, that in some senses the Maoist organisations have undergone the opposite journey – from having their core base among sectors of the landless and the marginal peasantry, who are more within ‘normal’ state functioning and property relations, their centre has moved into the forest areas. Even within the forests, the majority of communities and areas are not within the Maoist fold. The party has shown less ability to expand in regions such as western Maharashtra, south Gujarat, western Madhya Pradesh, etc., where – due to regional social processes and struggles – the forest economy has shifted more towards a “normal” peasant configuration. Thus, overall, the party appears to have moved from areas of stronger hegemony to ones of weaker hegemony. This does not strengthen belief in the ability of “people’s war”, as they frame it, to be a strategy of struggle in areas where binary “state vs people” modes of exploitation do not exist so concretely.
And it is here that the more fundamental danger arises. Posing the question of people’s war as an inevitability, a choice between a marauding state intent on annihilating people and a revolutionary force whose promise lies in making a “better state”, does not correspond to the political reality of most of the oppressed in India today. For all its venality, brutality and inhumanity, the Indian state retains a weakened but still very real hegemonic status in most of the country. For most working class Indians, bourgeois democracy may have failed to deliver its claims, but it is not a lie; and to merely declare that it is one is not going to make it so.
To ignore this, and focus only on the state’s coercive operations in the forests, makes the conflict appear either irrelevant or, worse, alien to the majority of the population. It converts oppression rooted in Indian capitalism into the problem of some remote far off area, a war between “tribals” and “corporates” in what seems to be a foreign land. This, ultimately, only serves the government’s purposes; what better way to ensure that opposition to Operation Green Hunt, outside the conflict zones, fails to develop a mass character? Instead of weakening state hegemony, we thus find ourselves reinforcing it.
Alternative Possibilities
If we are to place Operation Green Hunt accurately within our own analyses, it is important to stress theconnections and parallels between the forest conflict and oppression in other areas, without slipping into over-generalisations. These parallels operate at different levels. One instance is the increasing use of law as a direct tool of accumulation, such as through Special Economic Zones, anti-encroachment drives in urban areas, etc. There are strong similarities between these processes and the use of forest law; exposing this function of law in turn exposes the class nature of the state. Another similarity is the continuous process of enclosure and extermination of systems of common production, often using the law, but also through other methods.
Which parallels are relevant and how are, of course, matters of separate debate. In this of course there will be sharp differences the various left streams on our understanding of the present socioeconomic formation. In general, however, such connections need to be exposed and analysed to build both a broader praxis and an understanding of how, in each sphere of struggle, hegemony can be weakened. But to simply overlook the political positioning of forest areas and continue with over-specific or over-general arguments is to risk strengthening the government’s narrative – with attendant dangerous consequences for us all.
Notes:
1. In this note, I am not entering into the debate as to whether this is genuine autonomous capitalist development or that of a compradore bourgeoisie; for the limited purpose here, there is little difference.
2. An example of the former is Saroj Giri, “‘The Dangers Are Great, the Possibilities Immense’: The Ongoing Political Struggle in India“; for the latter see Bernard D’Mello, “Spring Thunder Anew“.
Radical Notes 
Doing In-Against-and-Beyond Labour
John Holloway
(1)
At the heart of the social movements of recent years, at least in their more radical variants, is a drive against the logic of capitalist society. The so-called social movements are not organised as parties: their aim is not to take state power. The goal is rather to reverse the movement of a society gone mad, systematically mad. The movements say in effect “No, we refuse to go in that direction, we refuse to accept the mad logic of the capitalist system, we shall go in a different direction, or in different directions.”
The anti-capitalist movements of recent years give a new meaning to revolution. Revolution is no longer about taking power, but about breaking the insane dynamic that is embedded in the social cohesion of capitalism. The only way of thinking of this is as a movement from the particular, as the puncturing of that cohesion, as the creation of cracks in the texture of capitalist social relations, spaces or moments of refusal-and-creation. Revolution, then, becomes the creation, expansion, multiplication and confluence of these cracks.(1)
How do we conceptualise this sort of revolution? By going back to a category that was of central importance for Marx, but has been almost completely forgotten by his followers. This is the dual character of labour, the distinction between abstract and concrete labour.
The social cohesion of capitalism against which we revolt is constituted by abstract labour: not by money, not by value, but by the activity that generates the value and money forms, namely abstract labour. To crack the social cohesion of capitalism is to confront the cohesive force of abstract labour with a different sort of activity, an activity that does not fit in to abstract labour, that is not wholly contained within abstract labour.
(2)
This is not a dry theoretical point, for the starting point for considering the relationship between abstract and concrete labour is and must be rage, the scream. This is empirically true: that is actually where we start from. And also, rage is key to theory. It is rage which turns complaint into critique because it reminds us all the time that we do not fit, that we are not exhausted in that which we criticise. Rage is the voice of non-identity, of that which does not fit. The criticism of capitalism is absolutely boring if it is not critique ad hominem: if we do not open the categories and try to understand them, not just as fetishised expressions of human creative power, but as categories into which we do not fit, categories from which we overflow. Our creativity is contained and not contained in the social forms that negate it. The form is never adequate to the content. The content misfits the form: that is our rage, and that is our hope. This is crucial theoretically and politically.
(3)
In recent years, it has become more common to cite Marx’s key statement in the opening pages of Capital. “this point [the two-fold nature of the labour contained in commodities] is the pivot on which a clear comprehension of Political Economy turns” (1867/1965:41). After the publication of the first volume, he wrote to Engels (Marx, 1867/1987:407): “The best points in my book are: 1) the two-fold character of labour, according to whether it is expressed as use value or exchange value. (All understanding of the facts depends upon this. It is emphasised immediately in the first chapter).”
It is important to emphasise this statement, against the Marxist tradition which buried it for so long, and with quite extraordinary success. It is important to emphasise it because it takes us to the core of Marx’s critiquead hominem, understanding the world in terms of human action and its contradictions. The two-fold nature of labour refers to abstract and concrete or useful labour. Concrete labour, according to Marx, is the activity that exists in any form of society, the activity that is necessary for human reproduction. Arguably, Marx was mistaken in referring to this as labour, since labour as an activity distinct from other activities is not common to all societies, so it seems more accurate to speak of concrete doing rather than concrete labour. In capitalist society, concrete doing (what Marx calls concrete labour) exists in the historically specific form of abstract labour. Concrete labours are brought into relation with other concrete labours through a process which abstracts from their concrete characteristics, a process of quantitative commensuration effected normally through the medium of money, and this process of abstraction rebounds upon the concrete labour transforming it into an activity abstracted from (or alienated from) the person performing the activity.
(4)
It is thus the abstraction of our activity into abstract labour that constitutes the social cohesion of capitalist society. This is an important advance on the concept of alienated labour developed in the 1844 manuscripts: capitalist labour is not only an activity alienated from us, but it is this alienation or abstraction that constitutes the social nexus in capitalism. The key to understanding the cohesion (and functioning) of capitalist society is not money or value, but that which constitutes value and money, namely abstract labour. In other words we create the society that is destroying us, and that is what makes us think that we can stop making it.
Abstract labour as a form of activity did not always exist. It is a historically specific form of concrete doing that is established as the socially dominant form through the historical process generally referred to as primitive accumulation. The metamorphosis of human activity into abstract labour is not restricted to the workplace but involves the reorganisation of all aspects of human sociality: crucially, the objectification of nature, the homogenisation of time, the dimorphisation of sexuality, the separation of the political from the economic and the constitution of the state, and so on.
(5)
If we say that revolution is the breaking of the social cohesion of capitalism and that that cohesion is constituted by abstract labour, the question then is how we understand the solidity of that cohesion. In other words, how opaque is the social form of abstract labour? Or, rephrasing the same question in other
words, is primitive accumulation to be understood simply as a historical phase that preceded capitalism? If we say (as Postone (1996) does) that labour is the central fetish of capitalist society, then how do we understand that fetish?
Marx, in the passage quoted above, refers to the dual character of labour as the key to an understanding of political economy. He does not refer just to abstract labour but to the dual character of labour as abstract and concrete labour, and yet the commentaries that focus on this point concentrate almost exclusively on abstract labour, assuming that concrete labour (concrete doing) is unproblematic since it is entirely subsumed within abstract labour, and can simply be discussed as productivity. This implies that primitive accumulation is to be understood as a historical phase that was completed in the past, effectively establishing abstract labour as the dominant form of concrete labour, thus separating the constitution of capitalism from its existence. It implies the understanding of form and content as a relation of identity in which content is completely subordinated to form until the moment of revolution. This establishes a clear separation between the past (in which concrete doing existed independent of its abstraction) and the present (in which doing is entirely subsumed within its form), effectively enclosing the analysis of the relation between concrete doing and abstract labour within the homogenous concept of time that is itself a moment of abstract labour. This takes us inevitably to a view of capital as a relation of domination (rather than a contested relation of struggle) and therefore to a view of revolution as something that would have to come from outside the capital relation (from the Party, for example).
However, it is not adequate to understand the relation between abstract labour and concrete doing as one of domination. Rather, abstract labour is a constant struggle to contain concrete doing, to subject our daily activity to the logic of capital. Concrete doing exists not just in but also against and beyond abstract labour, in constant revolt against abstract labour. This is not to say that there is some transhistorical entity called concrete doing, but that in capitalist society concrete doing is constituted by its misfitting, by its non-identity with abstract labour, by its opposition to and overflowing from abstract labour.
This means that there can be no clear separation between the constitution and the existence of the capitalist social relations. It is not the case that capitalist social relations were first constituted in the period of primitive accumulation or the transition from feudalism, and that then they simply exist as closed social relations. If concrete doing constantly rebels against and overflows beyond abstract labour, if (in other words) our attempt to live like humans constantly clashes with and ruptures the logic of capitalist cohesion, then this means that the existence of capitalist social relations depends on their constant reconstitution, and that therefore primitive accumulation is not just an episode in the past. If capitalism exists today, it is because we constitute it today, not because it was constituted two or three hundred years ago. If this is so, then the question of revolution is radically transformed. It is not: how do we abolish capitalism? But rather, how do we cease to reconstitute capitalism, how do we stop creating capitalism? The answer is clear (but not easy): by ceasing to allow the daily transformation of our doing, our concrete activity, into abstract labour, by developing an activity that does not recreate capitalist social relations, an activity that does not fit in with the logic of the social cohesion of capitalism.
(6)
This might seem absurd, were it not for the fact that the revolt of concrete doing against abstract labour is all around us. Sometimes it takes dramatic proportions when a group like the Zapatistas says “no, we will not act according to the logic of capital, we shall do what we consider important at the rhythm that we consider appropriate.” But of course it does not have to be on such a large scale: the revolt of doing against abstract labour and the determinations and rhythms that it imposes upon us is deeply rooted in our everyday lives. Pannekoek said of the workplace that “every shop, every enterprise, even outside of times of sharp conflict, of strikes and wage reductions, is the scene of a constant silent war, of a perpetual struggle, of pressure and counter-pressure” (2005:5).(2) But it is not just in the workplace: life itself is a constant struggle to break through the connections forged by abstract labour to create other sorts of social relations: when we refuse to go to work so that we can stay and play with the children, when we read (or write) an article like this, when we choose to do something not because it will bring us money but just because we enjoy it or consider it important. All the time we oppose use value to value, concrete doing to abstract labour. It is from these revolts of everyday existence, and not from the struggles of activists or parties that we must pose the question of the possibility of ceasing to create capitalism and creating a different sort of society.
(7)
Not only is there a constant revolt of concrete against abstract labour, but there is now a crisis of abstract labour. Abstract labour cannot be understood as something stable: its rhythms are shaped by socially necessary labour time. Since abstract labour is value-producing labour and value production is determined by socially necessary labour time, there is a constant redefinition of abstract labour: abstract labour is a constant compulsion to go faster, faster, faster. Abstract labour constantly undermines its own existence: an activity that produced value a hundred (or ten, or five) years ago no longer produces value today. Abstraction becomes a more and more exigent process, and it becomes harder and harder for people to keep pace with it: more and more of us misfit, and more and more of us consciously revolt against abstract labour. Abstraction becomes an ever greater pressure, but at the same time it becomes a more and more inadequate form of organising human activity: abstraction is not able to channel effectively the activities of a large part of humanity.
The dynamic of abstraction comes up increasingly against a resistance that splits open the apparently unitary concept of labour and poses the struggle against abstract labour at the centre of anti-capitalist struggle. Anti-capitalist struggle becomes the assertion of a different way of doing, a different way of living; or rather, the simple assertion of a different way of doing (I want to spend time with my friends, with my children, I want to be a good teacher, carpenter, doctor and work at a slower pace, I want to cultivate my garden) becomes converted into anti-capitalist struggle. The survival of capital depends on its ability to impose (and constantly redefine) abstract labour. The survival of humanity depends on our ability to stop performing abstract labour and do something sensible instead. Humanity is simply the struggle of doing against labour.
(8)
It is in the context of the crisis of abstract labour that the discussion of abstract labour acquires importance. It is important, that is, if we focus not just on abstract labour, but on the dual character of labour, the antagonism between doing and labour. If we focus just on abstract labour and forget concrete doing, then we just develop a more sophisticated picture of capitalist domination, of how capitalism works. Our problem, however, is not to understand how capitalism works but to stop creating and recreating it. And that means strengthening doing in its struggle against labour.
It is not theory that brings about the splitting of the unitary concept of labour. The splitting of the unitary concept has been the result of struggle. It is a multitude of struggles, large and small, that have made it clear that it makes little sense to speak just of “labour”, that we have to open up “labour” and see that the category conceals the constant tension-antagonism between concrete doing (doing what we want, what we consider necessary or enjoyable) and abstract labour (value-producing, capital-producing labour). It is struggle that splits open the category, but theoretical reflection (understood as a moment of struggle) has an important role to play in keeping the distinction open.
This is important at the moment when there are so many pressures to close the category, to forget about the antagonism the category conceals, to dismiss the notion that there could be some form of activity other than abstract labour as silly, romantic, irresponsible. In capitalist society, access to the means of production and survival usually depends upon our converting our activity, our doing, into labour in the service of capital, abstract labour. We are now at a moment in all the world in which capital is unable to convert the activity of millions and millions of people (especially young people) into labour, other than on a very precarious basis. Given that exclusion from labour is generally associated with material poverty, do we now say to capital “please give us more employment, please convert our doing into labour, we will happily labour faster-faster-faster”? This is the position of the trade unions and many left political parties, as it must be, for they are organisations based on abstract labour, on the suppression of the distinction between labour and doing. Or do we say “no, we cannot go that way (and we do not ask anything of capital). We know that the logic of faster-faster-faster will lead to ever bigger crises, and we know that, if it continues, it will probably destroy human existence altogether. For this reason we see crisis and unemployment and precariousness as a stimulus to strengthen other forms of doing, to strengthen the struggle of doing against labour.” There is no easy answer here, and no pure solution, because our material survival depends, for most of us, on subordinating our activity to some degree to the logic of abstraction. But it is essential to keep the distinction open and find ways forward, to strengthen the insubmission of doing to labour, to extend the rupture of labour by doing. That is the only way in which we can stop reproducing the system that is killing us.
John Holloway is a Professor in the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in Mexico. His publications include Crack Capitalism (Pluto, 2010),Change the World Without Taking Power (Pluto, 2005), Zapatista! Reinventing Revolution in Mexico (co-editor, Pluto, 1998) and Global Capital, National State and the Politics of Money (co-editor, Palgrave Macmillan, 1994).
Notes:
(1) For a development of this argument, see my forthcoming book, Crack Capitalism.
(2) I take the quote from Shukaitis (2009:15).
References:
Holloway, John (2010) Crack Capitalism (London: Pluto Press)
Marx, Karl (1867/1965), Capital, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers)
Marx, Karl (1867/1987), ‘Letter of Marx to Engels, 24.8.1867’, in Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Collected Works vol. 42 (London: Lawrence & Wishart), p. 407
Pannekoek, Anton (2005) Workers’ Councils (Oakland: AK Press)
Postone, Moishe (1996) Time, Labour, and Social Domination: A reinterpretation of Marx’s critical theory(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
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